The Ascension Factor

Rico didn't understand, and he knew they didn't have time to think about it.

He didn't say anything more, just turned on his heel and picked up Crista's legs under the knees. Ben reached under her arms and they stumbled with her through the hatchway into what was left of the cabin.

A few of the lights still worked, illuminating the burst-in walls and ceiling. The galley and aft portion of the foil remained upright, but the boat was twisted nearly in half at the cabin hatchway. The entire bow lay on its side. One of the wings had sprung from its retraction bay and sliced into the fuselage, peeling a section of hull away like a rind.

Ben brushed away debris with his feet and they set Crista down. She called his name and gripped his arm. Rico went immediately to work trying to free them from the deflated hylighter and the wreckage. Some pockets of undissipated hydrogen worried him. The rain helped, but he worried about sparks — not the spiritual kind he'd seen in the galley, but the metal-to-rock kind that might flash the hydrogen.

"There's still some gas around here," Rico warned them. "It shouldn't be a problem but we should be careful. Our judgment's been dusted, too, so we have to be extra careful. Don't move around much until we get free."

Rico's legs stood in the fuselage rip while the rest of him worked at using the wing section as a shield to push the dead hylighter away from the foil. With his head and shoulders in the open he could see that the foil lay next to the cliff, with the hylighter spread out between the foil and the sea. A small flap of the bag and two tentacles covered the foil. The whole scene whirled in a lightshow of spore-dust.

No gas out here, he thought. A good offshore breeze.

Rico smelled a greasy char, sickly sweet, as he burned through the hylighter flap with his lasgun. Peeling it back from the fuselage made him even more lightheaded and wobbly-kneed. A thick, steamy smoke filled the cabin and Crista coughed behind him.

"Crista!"

Ben's voice sounded happier than Rico had heard it in a long time. Releasing the flap of hylighter let in some air and some light. The rain had muddied most of the dust, but they'd still had a pretty stiff dose. Rico's head felt as if it was ready to take a big plunge, as if he was clinging to some giant fluke just before it sounded for the deeps. He kept reminding himself aloud, "We've been dusted, it will pass soon."

He ducked back inside and Crista leaned on one elbow, coughing and gasping, and shook her head.

"Ben," her voice was gravelly and deep, "we are saved. Avata will see to it."

Just then a tentacle slithered through the hole above them. In less than a blink it snaked around Rico's waist and in another it snatched him through the hole. Its grip on his waist was stronger than anything he'd felt in his lifetime, but it didn't hurt. He heard a shout and felt a grab from Ben, then the hole and the foil disappeared from sight and Rico couldn't see anything but water.

* * *

Therefore, if it was more necessary in those days to satisfy the soldiers than the people, this was because the soldiers had more power than the people. Today. all rulers find it more necessary to satisfy the people than the soldiers, because the former now have more power than the latter.

— Machiavelli, The Prince

Holomaster Rico LaPush was a fine prize indeed. The Immensity respected this human LaPush as a sculptor of images, the best that the humans had ever mustered. For nearly a decade the Immensity had monitored human transmissions in all spectra. Through these transmissions it witnessed the inevitable unraveling of human politics. When it had its own data to compare, it compared, and it found significant facts wanting. From humans it learned to lie. Then it learned the subtle differences between lie and illusion, truth and illumination.

The Immensity intended to learn holography. On its own it had mustered transient illusion at times — ghost ships at sea, phantom radio transmissions — the parlor tricks of broadcast. Holography was more precious than that. The Immensity knew humans, now, and human history. It knew that holography, the pure language of imagery and symbol, would become the interspecies tongue.

There were the other forms, of course — electrical voice-talk of the humans. They spoke to each other of fish concentrations, weather, delivered the mysterious modulations that humans called "music." Except for the music this had been easily understood, but not very interesting. Then the human they dared call "Kelpmaster" began using the kelp itself as a medium of conduction. This private communications channel linked the Orbiter with the Zavatan world, and the kelp heard everything. The Immensity spoke in pictures, and these words over the kelp channel helped weave a picture of the world as it was, and as it could be. Though the Kelpmaster listened, he lacked the subtleties of holography that the Immensity required.